Rebirth?
by Dani-Of-The-Dark
Summary: They say that those who use the Death Note can neither go to heaven nor hell. Where do they go? Who really thinks that L was so innocent as not to use the notebook, the Death Note, himself? To logically confirm, with his own eyes and soul, what happened after death? If it even worked? Will he born again? Will he become a death god? Currently T for teen. Confusing and scary concepts
1. Prologue

As "L Lawliet" isn't exactly a name you find on birth certificates, L will be referred to as "Liam" from here on out. Please enjoy!

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**_November 5th, 2007_**

Describing _it_ is impractical. The sensation could be compared to sleeping. It is… exceedingly close, but the difference is… just as massive, gargantuan, titanic, along with numerous other synonyms, and, at the same time, it _has_ to be described in the same way. It is similar to sleep in that the signals of the synapses – signals the brain receives and transmits – are perceived as clouded; the five senses feel as though they are reconstructed in a manner that is comprehensible, yet undeniably foreign. There is no logical thought at all; even perceiving the same sensations as life takes place without consciousness. For a lack of a better way to put it, concepts are just known, details do not exist except as concepts, and all relative information escape as soon as something else appears though it is neither lost nor forgotten. All is simply known. Maybe it is peace.

That's it.

I am at peace. I suppose even if my corpse were rotting in front of my eyes, with my executioner clutching it in his arms, I wouldn't feel any worse for it. I know I am dead. Why should I strive to retaliate? Why should I, a deceased man – who can finally rest in peace – fight back? Why, when I could muse over the many obscured secrets of the unknown? Like the air. How come the air feels so heavy and intense, yet so buoyant at the same time? Why do I feel air at all? If my flesh is gone, then why do I feel?

But I digress. _It_ - the sensation of being deceased - could never be expressed, but then again...

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The last thing Liam had ever expected was to be present for the moment the case that killed him ended. Never had he imagined that Kira would become so arrogant as to confess in front of, not only the task force he had organized all those years ago, but, also, the successors Wammy had raised in L's place.

Kira had been doomed from the beginning; everything was coming together.

Liam had been right; he had known it all along, even in the most confusing and trying times. Light Yagami, among others, was the one who started the mess that the world was in. He was Kira.

A blank expression in place – no different than when Liam was alive –he surveyed the scene from above. He couldn't quite understand what Light was saying, or what any of them were saying, though the tone of Light's voice sounded close to hysterics. And then his back turned to those he had betrayed.

Liam would never be fully adjusted to the feeling of being dead, he was sure, and even less to acting as a ghost; it was far too different. Even his vision was off and nearly impossible to decipher. Strange auras and sensations clouded his eyes.

What was worse was it felt as though time had stopped for him. One minute he had been dead, his eyes closing to the sight of Light's smirking in his face, the red aura first making its appearance to him, and the next he was watching as Matsuda shot Light's hand with bullets in a fit of emotion, perhaps out of reflex, but betrayal emanated strongly from him..

"MATSUDA, YOU IDIOT!" A wheeze. A gasp. "WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE SHOOTING AT? DON'T SCREW WITH ME." A pathetic scene by anyone's account. Light was truly defeated. The one man he thought he could count on in the task force was making a stand. Now Liam saw even more betrayal.

The ghost leaned closer, though he had no reason to move an inch in the weightless, weight-heavy air. He had finally focused on something verbal. The ghost straightened up just as soon. Yet another unnecessary movement, but the habit was there. He could just see the blood dripping from Light, though likely it was more like he saw the life draining out of Kira.

Light would die soon, and just as Liam had died in the arms of his killer, he too would be there to watch the great 'God Of The New World' crumble to pieces. The sound of begging from below, pleading directed at everyone Light had ever trusted, confirmed his assumptions. Light was better than begging. He would die soon. Kira was on the brink of death.

Liam snapped his head towards a new scream. Mikami. In all the dramatics, he had forgotten that the man existed. He too would die today, and the spray of life from his chest only confirmed his thoughts.

Without turning, through vision that encompassed the entire area without a single optical nerve, he 'saw' Light open the door and stumble out onto the sidewalk. It seemed that in death eyes were unnecessary to view the world, but he thought he understood why hauntings often took the form of falling objects. The ghosts simply couldn't direct a physical body without misjudging. He performed no better.

Liam floated through a wall, not the door as he had intended, and above his first real friend to watch the last walk. He almost felt sad to see such an intelligent, young man fall in such an ungraceful, bloody way. Light was everything graceful when Liam had been there.

The Shinigami Ryuuk only spared the ghost of L a glance as Liam followed Light to a new building and descended to watch his archenemy's death. It felt like the world was moving in slow motion, as if time were slowing down once again.

Liam could hear the scratch of pen to paper, and he knew it was Light's name being written. It didn't take long. Just over half a minute. Light Yagami died on a staircase. Time stopped instantly.

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Alright! I'm glad it got this far, but now I'm at a standstill. What to do next? I have a basic idea, but I'd love to hear what you guys have to say. I'm Internet 'famous' for my fan fictions on another site, but that means nothing for this site. I'm very willing to read all the reviews. Anything, even hate, if that's your style, but I suggest not using your real username. ;)


	2. Chapter 1: The Shinigami Realm

**_Chapter 1: The Shinigami Realm_**

Time pressed forward once again for Liam. His perception of the space around him still felt out of sync with his body, but it came closer to what he had known when he was alive. He was seeing and hearing in nearly the same way as he had while on Earth, and the dry breeze against his skin was a welcomed and familiar sensation in the unforgiving and bizarre land. Liam imagined that all nightmares began there.

The scene was bathed in grey – dark and colorless. Sand slid from under his feet with each movement he made, and rocks towered above the wasteland in the distance. The sky was just as dingy as the landscape, ragged clouds blocking out any possible view of a star or moon, if there even was one to begin with. A faint rattle of chains could be heard with each and every puff from the chilling breeze. At the very least, it could never be too quiet between the howling of the wind and the clacking it caused. It was like no desert he had ever set foot in, yet it couldn't have been anything but a desert. Bones, even, protruded from the earth below, as if ancient beasts had desperately wandered around in search of water or food.

Perhaps, he mused, the dinosaurs had accidentally sealed their fate by falling into a pit that led to where he had been taken, wherever it was. Or maybe they had eaten from the dried up plants his gaze passed over. The trees appeared to sprout fruit, if the dead twigs could be called trees. He had no intention of attempting to eat anything in that realm.

Liam lifted a foot and cautiously rested it back on the sand. He hadn't sunk into the ground; it seemed to be safe. Soon, after a set of weary footsteps, he began to walk without worry. There seemed to be something strange about the world, something that made him feel as though he were being watched, but, surely, he couldn't die again.

As he traversed the sand, a new sensation – a new part of him – began to twitch from the tiny rocks tickling his skin. Liam stopped and flexed the new muscles, felt the new weight on his back, and tilted his head. Wings. He had grown leathery wings. For that matter, with a moment to consider how he felt, nothing had the same connection as it did before his death. Yet another new spark hit him then. Something was dragging along the ground, something Liam voluntarily twitched. The once-detective had wings and a tail. If only there was a mirror.

He raised the tail and took it into his clawed hands, seeing small, grey scales both on the extra appendage and his fingers. They were so fine, they reminded him of snake's skin, yet he could still feel the smallest detail with the pads of his fingers.

Liam raised both hands quickly and touched his face. It too had small, fine scales across where flesh had once been bountiful. Now, he couldn't even find the tip of his nose; there was just an indent with upraised scales surrounding it, or something like it, with slits for nostrils. He felt up to where his hair used to be, instead finding horns and spikes. He felt like he had become a demon.

His 'heart' dropped down to his stomach as he sat on the ground, pupil-less eyes falling to rest on his feet. They reminded him of a dog's, or a fox's in shape; it was then he came to the conclusion that he had been walking on his toes only, not his heels. It was almost too much to take. From sitting at a desk with delicious sweets to becoming a nightmare, Liam lost the ability to truly deduce the situation. He could always make guesses, but what was there to guess? He had scales; he had horns. Just as slowly as he had opened his eyes, he closed them. He wished over and over that he would open them, and he would be alive again in England, that the supernatural of the Kira Case was just a terrible dream.

"Are you feeling ill?" a voice from above asked, jarring him from his worried thoughts. "Why have you sat down?"

Liam turned his head to the side and tilted his chin upwards to look over his shoulder. What he saw appeared to be a skull within a face that also resembled a skull. Small, dangling arms – insect-like in appearance – reached out to offer him a hand. Three fingers per hand. If that wasn't enough, chains hung off the skeletal blob and stretched out along the ground beyond his vision. It made sense now why he had heard the sound of metal against metal, why he had felt like eyes were watching his every move.

"I feel fine," he answered at last, almost surprised by his voice's calmness. The thing wasn't trying to eat him, though it looked as though one bite from the larger face would swallow him whole. "But I don't know where I am." _Or what I am_, he added silently to himself.

There were no cases, no liabilities, and no reasons to continue acting strange. It had only been a disarming technique. Sitting half crouched did nothing for his deductive reasoning, but he had performed the balancing act too many times to count as a child. He actually hoped that he hadn't popped anything out of place from prolonged exposure before he died. He would have been lucky to escape a torn knee by the age of forty and luckier to feel little to no pain by thirty five.

It hardly mattered now; Liam would never see thirty.

The faces seemed to grin in unison before they parted their teeth to answer him. "'The human who uses the notebook can neither go to heaven nor hell' leaves only a few places for you, L Lawliet. You are in the realm of death gods."

The king of death withdrew his many hands and dropped a notebook and pen down in front of Liam, who delicately picked it up between two fingers. The new shinigami observed the book and looked up once again, to ask a question, but the chain-draped monster had disappeared from sight, only the sounds of rattling remaining, carried on dry air.

Liam sat in silence as he collected his thoughts, surprisingly calm. Images of bones stretching over the blob, with no joints, would forever haunt his sleep. He stopped. Did shinigami need sleep? He was dead but not dead, and he could not pass on to heaven, nor could he undergo the torture of hell. He reasoned that the time that had stopped for him was limbo but thought nothing more about it. He was a shinigami in the shinigami realm, and that was all there was to it; however…

There had been two shinigami notebooks in the human world before, so there had to be more shinigami. Liam hoped that, if he were going in the wrong direction of 'civilization', that the… whatever-that-was would have steered him in the right direction. There was also a nagging thought saying that it was the right direction for something. He stood up.

Liam glanced back to his wings and tail before taking a cautious step. But what if the thing didn't care for him? What if the feeling was just a wrong hunch? There had to be rules for death gods. He looked at the notebook and pen. In there? It seemed likely. He opened the notebook.

Inside, there appeared to be nothing but blank pages at first glance. Liam flipped through the notebook until he came to the back, and, to his luck, he found a page that didn't belong in the death note. It was loose but not torn on the edges. It was written in a language he had never seen before, but he found that he could read it. He glanced over it once, then twice.

The rules were simple enough. He had to kill to survive, just as the hunters of Earth, but only with the notebook. There were other rules, such as how to use the notebook correctly, but they were second to his survival. Reasonable. He folded up the piece of paper and placed it in his jeans' pocket. At least he still had his clothing. The shinigami, Rem, had appeared to lack clothes altogether.

Now Liam was ready. Tucking the death note by his side, he experimentally spread his wings and, through muscle memory he never knew he had, and flapped them. He nodded once to himself and jumped up into the air and moved them with more vigor. For a second, it seemed like he could actually be able to take flight, but then he lost the air under them. He fell. He landed on his stomach.

Liam pushed himself up and brushed the sand off. It was going to be harder than he thought. To save himself the embarrassment – the feeling of being watched hadn't left with the creature's departure – he walked it off. Eventually, he made his way to pools of water-like gas that appeared to be small bumps in the distance, rock and sand seamlessly mixing together. That was the spot that felt 'right', he realized.

They allowed a shinigami to see into the human world without forcing the death god to fly down his or her self. The bigger ones also allowed him to leave the realm, Liam decided after studying them for a moment. This was how Rem and Ryuuk came to the human world.

When Liam stopped to truly think about where he was, he didn't feel lost. He understood that the pools were in that direction before he ever saw them or learned of them, but he didn't necessarily know where 'civilization' was located. The passing thought of no civilization existing in the shinigami realm was accepted as a possibility just as quickly as the likeliness that all of the death gods could be in the human world at that very moment. The latter was unlikely, but it couldn't be ruled out.

Tail swishing, Liam turned around, only to come face to face with another unfamiliar creature. He took a step back, only the toes of his feet touching the ground, and let his eyes trace the figure before him.

The shinigami seemed to be wearing a brown shirt and goggles on its skeletal forehead; it lacked eyes in its sockets completely. Its mouth was gaping open, teeth pointed and sharp, much like Liam's own. It seemed to be male. Unlike him, the shinigami seemed to keep its human appendages and had nothing unusual in that department. What it did have was a bone-made staff, maybe a crude scythe or hammer. It looked to Liam like it could have used a haircut, at least, but the bone edge of the staff didn't look sharp enough to perform such a task.

For what felt like a full minute, the two stared at each other without moving a muscle. The bone-white shinigami was the first to move, his head tilting down to make his open mouth look like a grin. Liam stood with his feet shoulder width apart and relaxed his stance as he watched the small movements.

"You're new too?" came the question from the strange shinigami. He looked nothing like Rem, nor Ryuuk, though Liam doubted he himself looked even relatively close to the three he had seen. A single nod answered the other's question. "Then follow me."

The skeletal being turned and walked in the general direction that Liam had just come from but slightly to the right. With nothing else to guide him, Liam matched paces with the more humanistic creature, tail leaving a small, wavy line in the sand behind him. There was nothing but silence between the two of them the entire way.

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I don't know if I'm going to make a pairing in this story. You'll have to put up with me, as I wrote this way back when Death Note first came to America and it was on television and stuff. So most of this is an old idea that I never gave life, and I may yet go back and change a lot before I make it a "Complete" story. Until then, I hope you enjoyed! Reviews are very welcome. Also, pictures of the two are linked on my profile page (whenever it updates). I guess they can't be linked below.


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